Currently, many bakery ingredients (salt, flour, yeasts, enzymes, aromas, etc) are dosed separately. There are several disadvantages coupled therewith.
Separate dosing increases the risk of faults as well as the labor costs incurred with said dosing. In case of powdered products, the investments in separate dosing are further significantly higher compared to a single dosing system since all screws, all motors and automation has to be multiplied by the number of separate dosing points. Powdered dosing systems are also less accurate, or they require huge investments for automation. The dust production due to the dosing of powdered products is an increasing problem in the bakery due to its allergic properties. In terms of waste disposal, separate packaging will generate much more waste compared to an all in-one solution. Separate products increase the number of stock keeping units, complicating the logistic organization of the bakery as well as a decreased working capital due to immobilization of capital into stocks.
For these reasons, ready-to-use sourdough base compositions have been developed and liquid sourdough base compositions have entered the market as bakery ingredients.
There are many attempts to supply the yeasts together with chemical additives (or dough conditioners) such as oxidizing and reducing agents, emulsifiers, fatty materials, enzymes, etc (also referred to as improvers).
EP 0619947 for instance, describes the co-formulation of yeasts and improvers, and proposes to solve the problem of the instability of the composition by extruding the mixture.
EP 1090553 and the parent patent EP 0659344 describe a composition where the bread-improving agent has the same particle size as the dry yeast, which is in granular form. An alternative consists of coating the dry yeast granules with the bread-improving agent, in the form of a film or adhered particles.
But these proposed solutions involve further steps in the process and further equipments. Moreover, they do not solve another problem encountered when the mix of dry yeast and improvers (such as emulsifiers) is packed under vacuum: the product tends to make a bloc, difficult to break (referred to as the caking).